Unlike in the United States, however, where Trump targeted rural Americans left behind by economic progress, Bolsonaro’s working-class supporters mostly come from Brazilian cities – particularly the poor urban outskirts.

These areas, the focus of my sociology research on cities and democracy, have been hit hard by the severe crime wave and recession gripping Brazil since 2015, leaving a pool of precarious, disaffected voters ripe for Bolsonaro’s calls for radical change.

Brazil’s ‘new middle class’

Paradoxically, many of the working-class Brazilians who voted for Bolsonaro against his progressive opponent, Fernando Haddad, had seen their quality of life improve dramatically under Haddad’s center-left Workers Party.

The biggest gains occurred under Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010. Some 30 million poor Brazilians – 15 percent of the population – were lifted out of poverty during his two terms.

Lula’s anti-poverty achievements earned his Workers Party the fierce loyalty of poorer Brazilians. They voted overwhelmingly for his re-election in 2006 and supported his hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff, in Brazil’s 2010 and 2014 presidential elections.

But in 2018, Bolsonaro won many working-class urban neighborhoods expected to go to his Workers Party opponent, Fernando Haddad.

Even so, many Brazilians believe this law-and-order message coming from a former army captain like Bolsonaro.

Recession, crisis and a backlash

Economic troubles have also left Brazilian workers feeling endangered.

In 2015, Brazil entered a severe recession. Gross domestic product – which since 2004 had averaged around 3 percent growth every year – shrank by 3.5 percent in both 2015 and 2016.

Unemployment doubled, to over 12 percent. One in 4 working-age Brazilians suddenly became “underemployed.”

The recession, coupled with a nationwide corruption scandal that had implicated many high-ranking government officials, including Lula, created a sense of political chaos. Brazil’s crisis only deepened after the 2016 impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.

As a candidate, Bolsonaro pushed a narrative that Brazil’s recession was caused by corruption in the Workers Party, and he promised to clean up politics. He said criminals should die, lauded military dictatorships and proposed jailing leftists. He used racist, sexist and homophobic remarks to blame minorities and political correctness for Brazil’s decline.

Some political analysts reckon Bolsonaro’s policy agenda will actually hurt Brazil’s working classes.

A plan to auction off Brazil’s state electricity and oil companies to the highest bidder, for example, may give the economy a short-term boost, but economists warn that privatization won’t make these important sectors more efficient or innovative.

Bolsonaro’s promise to shutter the Ministry of Cities, which oversaw Brazil’s federal slum-upgrading investments under Presidents Lula and Rousseff, will hobble poorer cities. Programs for housing, sanitation and transportation are all under threat.

But that doesn’t mean urban working class voters will abandon President Bolsonaro.

After all, Trump’s approval ratings among America’s white working-class base have been relatively durable despite a 2017 tax reform that primarily benefited the rich and tariffs that hurt key sectors of the American economy.

Bolsonaro became Brazil’s president using the tried-and-true playbook of authoritarians worldwide. The resentments he stoked among poorer voters may continue to flourish even if their economic prospects do not.